


The locks will break

by Arctic_Cyclist



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman Beyond, Batman: Birth of the Demon, Futures End (Comics), Futures End: Grayson, Futures End: Teen Titans, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Assassin!Damian, DickDamiWeek, Gen, House of Leaves, dickdami week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 04:24:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11455935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arctic_Cyclist/pseuds/Arctic_Cyclist
Summary: Dick ends up in the world of Futures End, a world where Bruce failed to recover Damian's body from Ra's and it changed everything.





	The locks will break

**Author's Note:**

> The best part of DickDami week is rereading all their comics and remembering how awesome they were. I think people forget how in tune with emotions Damian is, and how cuddly he used to be written. Because going back and reading all the preboot comics and nu52's, it's amazing how different he is from popular head canons. He's almost always in physical contact with someone, and attuned to Dick and Alfred at scary levels. 
> 
> I miss it. 
> 
> I also realized that the Heretic in Futures End: Teen Titans is a fifteen year old Damian. He's smaller than the other Heretics from Batman Inc and Batman and Robin: Futures End, and talks like Damian. Would Ra's force Damian into the uniform and head space of his murderer? Considering that he personally handed Nyssa over to the concentration camps in Death and the Maidens because she wouldn't give him her first born? Absolutely.

It's his eyes that capture Dick. They send a thrill of fear? longing? hope? or is it despair that courses through him at their impersonal glance? He isn't sure. All he knows is in this dying future of an averted timeline his Robin's eyes are no longer spring blue. Still pale eyed, pale as Bruce's faded eyes. But now they are the color of a winter ocean during a storm and just as dangerous. Predator's eyes.

 

This is the world that Batman made. A failed future birthed of paranoia. Bruce won't admit it, he won't even admit he's the clone of a clone of a clone. He's become a version of Ra's al Ghul at last. Even the new Batman, Terry, and his little brother are part of the grand design. Products of a usurped relationship, an unwitting father's reproductive system high jacked, born to parents who never consented to be part of the project. 

Terry and Matt remind him of Damian. Dick avoids them and leaves the city.

 

People aren't starving despite the blasted environment. Meat is grown in Petri dishes. Plants grow in efficient towers run on solar power. A thousand square feet can feed hundreds with no waste, everything recycled. 

A world of rationing. Where regardless of wealth or input, everyone is cared for as they await the end. Outside of cities, places of resources, there is the broken kindness of the poor. They give him what they can. He wants, but like the gaunt eyed men and women, he cannot have. 

It's hot. Hotter every day as the tundras burn, fuel for fires going hundreds of feet down. Ash coats everything, sinking through his gear. In climate controlled shelters, he unwinds his scarfs and soaks them. Rinses them until the water is no longer black or brown. A pale tan that he uses to wash with. His hosts will use the dirty water for the hydroponics. A clean liter or three will be given for drinking. In exchange he tells stories or listens. Listening, Dick realizes, is often payment enough.

People want absolution. Forgiveness for their sins. He can't give that, but a quiet ear is enough. 

He sees Damian this way. At first he thinks, Tiger? The height is right, as are the coloring and build, but not the eyes. Nor the bone structure, Bruce's, with Talia's sensual mouth and those pale slate eyes. There hints of a Demon, whispers of a future for some. Few believe it. 

Instead they barter and trade for birth control because who could bring a child into this hell? Only a monster would do that to a child, and in this world egalitarianism has finally occurred: men are branded and sent out to starve with the mother. Massive scars, and castration to ensure that they can never escape their actions. 

He can't say he approves, but he doesn't disapprove either. There isn't a reason to argue about it.

 

Hints of Damian gather and grow. Enough that Dick turns back from his wandering to see if they can send him home to his place and time, or if he can find answers. He heads to the city that for over a decade and a half has been the closet approximation to home he has: Gotham.

 

In Gotham is Barbara. The current Commissioner Gordon, with a force more honest than it has ever been and hair as faded as this future. She offers him food and imitation coffee. Tells him her story, and those of her bats and birds, the heroes and villains fallen. 

She broke Bane. Snapped him in half, and he never recovered. Dick doesn't know if he's scared or proud of her. 

"Both," she says. "Be both. I fought Heretics too, dozens of them. Never the one we think was him, the original."

She does not say Damian or Robin. In the year they knew each other, neither ever warmed up to each other or even tried to. Damian was content to evade and avoid her, too tired of being judged by a past he couldn't control and parents who refused to be controlled. Dick didn't blame him. Babs loved Tim too much and ten year old boys are not easy creatures to tolerate. Even semi-standard ten year olds can be difficult if one isn't used to them. Oracle never had to deal with them outside her brother, she wasn't changing that for Talia's brat.

"No one reached out for him? Tried to save him?"

"Why?" At his stricken look, she softens and offers, "After our version of you died, no one could have. You were the best of us, Dick. I was in a bad place, like everyone else. Bruce was on another Robin. There was nowhere and no one to deal with the monster Ra's made of him. And he and his Titans were too fast, too evasive to pin down. They used Leviathan's tricks. Besides, in their way, they fought the good fight. A failed battle to save the environment and stop Brother Eye. Rumor has it they're still out there. The only Titan group to never lose members to death, if you don't count ones before signing up."

He leaves her to her city and the new Batman. Wonders if he could ever be that bitter, and then wonders if his former Robin is. In his time and place, Damian has forgiven Talia her sins or at least is working on it. He overlooks Bruce's many slights and insults, shouldering them as well as ones from others with an equanimity that makes people forget he's a kid. None of the rest of them had his world weary maturity at thirteen, though they all had his impatience, frustration, and anger. Is he still capable of change? Does he still listen and adapt himself to others like he did as Robin, and does he still have a cat like tendency to cuddle when it's least expected or brush up against people he likes? 

Under his masks and robes, is he still Damian? Or did Ra's body swipe him as he once intended to?

 

Wayne Manor's message is the same as it has always been: this is not for you. It's long dark hallways seem sooty dark, even more resistant to the intrusion of light than ever. It's why he fled to the bunker when he was Batman, and thinks Bruce did the same when Dick first left for college. Back home, Damian and his pets fill it with life. Even when the boy wonder wanders, there is an expectancy to the house. It knows he'll be back to race through the halls and explore its secrets. Every time Dick visits, the map of hidden rooms and passages grows more detailed. Footnotes chronicle their history, culled from letters of staff and Waynes long gone. Alfred is younger each time Damian comes home. Tim has a theory that Damian is slipping him the Lazarus potion in Alfred's tea, and approves. 

Damian has not set foot in these halls since the night he died. The night both of his parents declared they didn't want him, Bruce to his face and Talia over the comms. Despite his raging grief, it can be assumed that Bruce was more honest than anyone wants to admit as it was Ra's who brought Damian back. Brought him back and then broke him. At least Bruce's vision of Batman destroying the world was accurate. There is that. 

Bruce doesn't slap him for that comment, but it's a near thing. Instead he tells Dick to make his own bed. Bruce gave his old room to Tim when he adopted him, so Dick sidesteps that shrine and takes Damian's. A different hall than Bruce's, tucked away beneath Alfred's. 

It has good memories, even here. Whenever the world grinds too hard, he can trust Damian to know and seek him out or invite him in. They'll brew tea over the fire, Damian being the only one Alfred trusts to not burn the house down or ruin food, and talk. Once the heavy stuff is done, there is art and culture, both high and low. Emotions. Stuff. Relationships keep coming up because Damian might be the only one who understands how much that drives Dick. 

"You're a good story, Grayson, because you understand what Victor Hugo once said. At the core of every great story is love. Not romantic love. The real stuff. The stuff of sacrifice. A friend's love, a parent's love, a child's love, or a sibling's."

"As the bible says," Dick remembers saying, way back when, back when Damian was his Robin, "there's no greater love than a brother's." He'd rolled over to trap and cuddle his baby brother, the only one had lived with him like a brother. They fought over bathrooms in a home with a dozen bathrooms, and stolen clothes. They fought over little things, he fought Jason and Tim over things like lovers and joining death cults. Sometimes, he loves his brothers so much it hurts and sometimes he could murder them. But only one of them has ever put him before himself. 

In this world, he stayed in Spyral. If it weren't for that hug, the unconditional joy at his existence, he doesn't think he could have come out of the cold in his world either. He wouldn't have survived Bruce's death without the constant pressure to be a role model, a mentor, a parent. Or anything else. He doesn't like thinking about Damian's death and the year that followed. 

Or the second time he was too late and the tunic turned darker shade of red, the yellow to rust. 

"No one will ever love you more than me," they had said in unison and then "Jinx. Double jinx. Triple jinx."

This house is not for him. In a world without Dick Grayson, it appears it's not for Damian either.

 

"What you saw was not Damian." Bruce stirs sugar and half and half into the coffee. All three are now the rarest of luxuries. That Bruce has them is a sign that he will never change, never let go of the status he was born to.

Accepting it, Dick sips and marvels at how Bruce can be so old and accomplished, yet can't make a decent cup of coffee. 

"That creature is an abomination that Ra's created."

"But he is Damian. The one that was resurrected in the Well of Sins, isn't he?"

"His body. His training. A twisted, broken version of his soul, yes. A creature without memories, loyal only to Ra's. Another Talia. Your death, our version of you, was his fault."

The coffee has no body. It's poorly brewed, and has too much sugar. Sticky and cloying as he swallows. It clings to the lump of ash in his throat. 

"Funny that. You'll blame a fifteen year old for failing to save a grown man from his actions. A brainwashed child. But you can forgive yourself for not extracting me-"

"Dick-"

"And you'll forgive Jason all his sins, every kill. But never Damian. No matter how hard he tried, because he was a child and it was your job to protect him. You blame him for your failures, and always have."

"Dick, that's not fair. I didn't know that he existed."

The china clinks as Dick sets it down. The pale sludge sloshes around, like the sewage Damian waded through to find his grandmother's pearl.

"Alfred and I had a bet on when Talia would show up with kids. She once told me that Thomas was fine as a middle name but she vetoed Martha. That was when Jason was Robin. You knew he existed. You just didn't want to deal with having an actual kid."

Whatever excuse or justification Bruce has to offer, Dick doesn't care to hear. There are too many ghosts and demons in this place, and none of them are the right one.

 

Getting to the Hindu Kush is both as difficult and easy as it has ever been. Global warming and various wars have devastated this region as much as everywhere else, but there's a resilience here. An acknowledgement of eons of history lost and forgotten, as this too will be. It's the first place Dick has seen children. The high clear voices startle him. Make his heart race because there is hope here in the Demon's shadow.

He steps into a tea shop, one with real tea, and a blue skinned man is waiting for him. Despite Dick's instinctive response and the appropriateness, it's not Shiva.

"Klarion? Then you must be the Flash, Animal Woman. And Mara."

"You know of me? I was never a Titan, and we kept the Fist's identities well concealed."

"In this world. In mine, Damian told us about you." He doesn't say, because he had to. Because he refused to let others die, would rather surrender himself to hell than sacrifice others. Let them believe his lie; that Damian trusts him with all his secrets. Give him another chance. It will be true someday.

They shrug and accept the improbable. These are the inner circle of Heretic, of Ra's al Ghul, he trusts them. Therefore they can accept that in another time and place their leader can trust others. Something stirs in Dick's heart. For the first time since arriving, things seem right. 

Klarion lays out the cards, a simple spread. Damian, the one Dick has seen in visions of the future, glares out from a scene of green and gold at the center. 

"You want a way home. We can provide that, we're in the final stages of creating it." Klarion turns another card. "You wish to know what happened to Batcow?" He looks up, brow furled. "Really? You need to know about Damian Wayne's pets?" At Dick's shrug and smile, Klarion continues his reading. 

In an undertone, Animal Woman says to the other women, "No wonder he loved him. Anyone who asks about long lost pets can't be bad."

"Shush." Mara says, "Not that I disagree. Animals have always been more enjoyable than people."

"Mhm hmm." 

"They joined the Huntress and Power Girl, allies of Heretic from prior to the death of Damian. They fought bravely for the displaced, and fell in battle. It was why he joined us and merged our causes." Klarion flips another card. None of them belong to any deck Dick has ever seen. The magician stares at the final card, then holds it for the women to see. 

Mara snarls, and spits at Dick's feet. "Fine. I will go inform my cousin and prepare a place for the interloper."

 

A day later, and Dick is in the same temple where he once fought to save Tim's soul. Where Damian was conceived, where Ra's first offered Bruce his daughter. The place has a lot of memories, some of them are good.

Joining the ranks, he trains and regains the muscle mass he's lost. Food is plentiful. As artificially produced as everywhere else, but more flavorful. Everyone gets desert under the influence of the Demon. Somehow, Dick is not surprised. His Robin was always interested in justice when it comes to dessert.

In a few days, he has taken over some of the training. The Flash keeps him updated on the attempt to send him home, as serious and light hearted as every Flash before her. She doesn't give her name or story, no one does. Assassins live in the present and future. They do not dwell on the past.

Mara and Koru walk with the Demon, his Ghost and Ubu reflecting in the polished gold plate of his mask. Aside from the first time in the distant, dusty, dying city he hasn't seen Damian's face. Flash brushes off the questions, according to her he's never been one to bare his face. The previous Ra's didn't approve, and Heretics understand obedience. They were legion and as such easy to dispose of and replace if they resisted the Head's commands. No more Damians, wild and free. No Robins. Only good soldiers, loyal to the Demon's Head and his causes.

At night, Dick shifts and cries out as he dreams of the Heretics, of his Damian lost first in the silver mask of his murderer and then the gold of the grandfather who erased him. After the first time he wakes up screaming for Robin, he is directed to a monk's cell with a pallet on a stone shelf and weapons on the walls. He wakes once to a pair of pale eyes watching him in the dark, a warm hand tucking him in before the shadow settles back to sleep on the floor. Too tired to speak, Dick drops a hand onto the rock hard shoulder and drifts back to sleep. The same way he would for his Robin who was too wary to sleep in a bed, but too lonely to sleep alone.

His demon is gone in the mornings, a hint of rosemary and mint lingering to prove he had been there.

 

As he found in the places awaiting and accepting death, there is a peace here. A life of rhythm and ritual, ordered and organized. Violence hovering around the edges and at the core, but there's a goodness as well. It's confusing. A mystery that he'll never solve. A side of Damian he never thought to see.

 

Then comes the day the Demon says in his echoing voice, "Grayson. I would talk with you. Come."

He falls in behind the Demon, resenting the green that should be gray or black (canary yellow, he misses the canary yellow blazing, the star he wished on every night as Batman). They go the bathing room, a vast place under a slash in the mountain so deep it's never day above. There are always stars above, stars or clouds, never sunshine. 

The floor is heated by the same hot springs that fill the Olympic sized pool, the private showers, and laundry area. It's a rare patch of al Ghul luxury, the only one Damian has clung to of his heritage. Everything else of Bruce, Talia, and the first Ra's has been discarded in favor of a monk's penance. 

It's as asexual of a bathhouse as anywhere Dick has been; children use it and the Demon will not tolerate violations of what little innocence they have or are trying to recover. A lingering reminder of the harassment he faced as Robin. No one else got strip teases and lap dances their first year, and it was ages before he or Tim were chased by naked women. Dick doesn't wonder that Damian has no tolerance as an adult for people who violate boundaries. 

"Out," Ra's says. "What I wish to say to the trespasser is for his ears alone. Mara and Koru, take the Hand as well. I require full privacy."

Dick's back prickles at Koru's look, Ubus have and always will hate him in every reality. It's like gravity, a reassuring universal constant. Shadows move and silence remains aside from the faint rustle of a Demon disrobing. He lays out his clothing, armor, and gear in neat lines to be cleaned and pours water over his head. Starts scrubbing. Dick imitates him. Watches as the lather turns gray. Rinses. Repeats until the soap stays white, the water clear, than follows Damian as he wades into the pool. The heat soaks into him and unwinds his muscles.

"When I was allowed to take off the mask of the Heretic, I was twenty seven and my frontal lobe was fully developed. A stranger who looked like golden Bruce Wayne looked at me in the mirror. I have yet to grow use to his face. Besides, as the man in black in that asinine movie we watched until I could quote it said, masks are quite comfortable. All the best people wear them."

Ra's kicks off, and slides into the water, smooth as an otter or snake. A child raised by the oceans and mountains, at home in the blue. 

"Why did he make you wear it for so long?" Dick calls and splashes after him into the steam lit by stars and fire. Red and gold. Robin colors swirl around them, shelter them.

"Because Damian had the mistaken belief that he was special. Valuable. That his desires and will superseded that of Ra's al Ghul. He was willing to erase himself and debase all his family had given him by wearing the uniform of Batman's disposable acolytes. Therefore he needed to understand what he had become when he discarded all his grandfather had given him."

Dick chases the voice so like Bruce's only more musical. It plays with the echoes, owner hiding in the shadows. 

"Robin is as replaceable as Heretic. Duke Thomas and Harper Row both filled the role within months of Damian's death. Dick Grayson gave his approval of both. If Damian had any clear memories of Grayson at the time, it would have felt like a blade through his chest. Those memories only came back when Grayson swung from a rope for murder. They burned Grayson's body. Heretics slaughtered the executioners. Grandfather forgave my indiscretion, and replaced the helmet with one that had better drainage. He understood tears."

A hand catches his ankle. Yanks him beneath the water and lets go. Dick scrabbles for a grip on the powerful body that brushes by. It slips out of his reach. Waves plash around them, a soft soothing sound in the dim.

"Titus?"

"Titus, the cat, and the cow were all claimed by the League at the same time they recovered Damian and Talia. They joined the war, allies of Helena Wayne, Damian's half sister from another world. She was," Damian brushes behind Dick, and the smaller man spins to grab at the ghost. Misses. "The first person Damian had met who loved him and trusted him without hesitation or conditions. The first one he remembered clearly from his time as Robin. You have not met her, she and Power Woman run my Shadows. In time, when I go mad from immortality, they will leave me as Huwe and Uncle left my predecessor to manage both day and dark to keep me balanced and checked. I might even believe them dead and gone forever as the first Ra's thought his beloved uncle and lover were. Marco."

"Polo. I gave you unconditional trust and love too."

A wave hits him.

"Tt. Liar. You made me earn it. Marco."

A flash of golden brown gleams in the light. Dick sinks in the water and whip kicks after it, grinning. He pushes up to pounce on the broad back, bearing them both under. Damian rolls and bucks, Dick won't let go. 

"And now you're Ra's al Ghul. How do you know he won't come back again? Try to steal your body?"

Damian relaxes. His mass draws them down, heels dragging on the textured tiles. Floating, he lets Dick cling to him the way he would as a child under the polluted skies of Gotham when they didn't have any plans for the day. They would play in the pool some nights, after patrol, and as Damian began to trust Dick, he'd let him hold him as they floated. He would humor Dick's attempts to teach him games. Neither ever admitting that both needed contact, grounding through skin. Even if Damian bleeds the need for hugs so much that Alfred and Commissioner Gordon have a tendency to lay a hand on his shoulder in and out of uniform, and tolerate the way he'll sidle up to lean against them as if he were a poorly trained dog or pushy cat. He presses his cheek against Damian's and aches to stay. To try and fix him again, this lost and broken man who thinks he's a demon.

"I devoured his heart. The rest of him too. Cracked his bones for the marrow. It took a week to eat all of him and gave me the worst gas I have ever had."

Tightening his grip, Dick groans, "You're kidding."

"No. Everyone agrees it was wretched. After years of being a vegetarian, with exceptions for fish, insects, dairy, and eggs, eating meat was rough on my system. And he was tough and gamy. I understood that human was supposed to be delicious. He was not delicious. Aside from the obvious and useful parts, I don't understand why and how ritual cannibalism keeps popping up. Soylent Green is terrible and inefficient. Don't eat people, Grayson, it's not worth it. Unless you're making sure they can't be resurrected again and you are absorbing their memories and essence in controlled steps so they don't overwhelm and erase you."

Kicking up, Damian propels them through the water. Drag slows them. They circle around, scraping on the shallow ends.  
"You ate your grandfather all by yourself."

"I shared some with Mara. She's as much his heir as I am. For the record, there were no fava beans or chianti when we did. It was serious work, and honestly, I don't think he would have worked with a chianti. I did drink some vodka to kill my taste buds. Don't be judgmental, Grayson. Catholics have been eating their god to prevent his wrathful return for two thousand years."

Brushing his nose through the thick, black, soaked hair, Dick murmurs, "I don't think that's the official intent."

"Tt. Ignore the propaganda and accept that eating gods is the only way to both become them as well as prevent their return. I devoured Ra's and became him. As I did so, my long lost friend, the only person besides me to have known Sora, and my Uncle who left me in the time of Elizabeth the first, returned. They clarified my history, told it as it was instead of what Dusan and the original preferred. I remember her, Grayson. Her scent, her smile, her brilliance. The beauty that the foul Runce craved and despoiled. Her father, and Runce's. The all consuming love they had for their children that I envied and craved. All that he was, almost two thousand years of history, dwells in me. I remember the language that died because I couldn't bear to hear it spoken or see it written knowing it was hers, ours. My native tongue, dead so no lesser woman would speak it. I apologize, Grayson, I can't create a memorial like that for you. I enjoy English too much to destroy it, as I do our Farsi and Urdu. My love for you is great, but I can't destroy entire cultures for it. I did level a couple of cities."

"Thank you?"

There is a shift, and Dick takes the hint to move out from beneath him. Holding onto Ra's's head, he floats back so they rest ear to ear. Reaching up, the Demon tangles their fingers together. 

They spin in a slow dance beneath the stars and watch the aurora ripple above.

Damian answers the question before Dick can ask it; they at too far south to see the aurora. "Your way home is almost ready."

He's clean now, and whole. Even as the head of the League of Assassins, his Robin has done what he does best. Found Dick's issues, addressed them, and given him guidance in the way he needs. As he did when he was Dick's Robin, and after the Court and his great grandfather's revelations, after the Joker tore his life apart, when he was trapped by spies and lies, or falling into Hurt's madness. Damian finds him and guides him home. But who finds Damian?

"There will come a time, an eon or more from now, when my heirs will do to me as I did to my grandfather. My sister will tell them about you, about Robin. Richard Grayson, like Sora, I will always love you. And I will always miss you." Ra's stands, water sluicing off of him. Light gleams in his eyes, and falls. He takes a breath and holds it, digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Now go. The way back to your world is ready, and Damian is waiting. There is no place here for you."

He fades away, and Dick wades out to the waiting assassins. The last he sees of that world is darkness, and the creature born to and of it. A demon shaped like a man, who will love him forever with eyes like a winter ocean.


End file.
